WASHINGTON —J. Christopher Stevens arrived in Benghazi, Libya, in April 2011 aboard a Greek cargo ship carrying a dozen U.S. diplomats and guards and enough vehicles and equipment to set up a diplomatic beachhead amid an armed rebellion.

Even then, the fraught, divided view of the NATO-led intervention was on display, as were the dangers of diplomacy in a turbulent nation. The rebels fighting Moammar Khadafy had hoisted U.S., British and French flags in the plaza in Benghazi they renamed Freedom Square, Stevens often recalled, but a car bomb later exploded in the parking lot of the hotel where he and his team had settled, forcing them to move.

Stevens, 52, died in Benghazi on Tuesday, along with Sean Smith, an information management officer who joined the Foreign Service 10 years ago, and two other employees of the State Department whose names have not been released. Armed militants began firing on the U.S. Consulate during a violent protest over the release of a U.S.-made anti-Islam video.

“It’s especially tragic that Chris Stevens died in Benghazi,” President Barack Obama said in the White House’s Rose Garden, “because it is a city that he helped to save.”

Stevens, a fluent Arabic speaker, knew better than most diplomats in the U.S. Foreign Service the opportunities and travails facing Libya after the fall of Khadafy.

Having served as the deputy ambassador during Khadafy’s rule, he acted as the Obama administration’s main interlocutor to the rebels based in Benghazi, who ultimately overthrew him while NATO conducted airstrike missions.

Obama rewarded him with the nomination to become the first ambassador in a post-Khadafy Libya, and he arrived in May with enthusiasm for the country’s prospects as a free, Western-friendly democracy.

“The whole atmosphere has changed for the better,” he wrote in an e-mail to friends and family in July. “People smile more and are much more open with foreigners. Americans, French and British are enjoying usual popularity. Let’s hope it lasts.”

For those who knew him, Stevens was an easygoing, accessible, candid and at times irreverent diplomat, with a deep understanding of Arab culture and politics that began when he was a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching English in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.

“The thing that struck me was that he had a level of candor that was unusual for a diplomat,” said Sidney Kwiram, who conducted research for Human Rights Watch in Libya during the revolution and afterward and often met with him. “He had no pretensions.”

She last spoke with him two weeks ago after her own visit to Benghazi, spending two hours on the telephone discussing the intricacies of Libya’s new political forces.

“There was no formality to his rank,” she said. “He didn’t take himself too seriously, but he took his job very seriously.”

Stevens, a native of California and graduate of University of California, Berkeley, joined the Foreign Service in 1991 after working as a trade lawyer. He spent much of his career in the Middle East, serving in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel, where he focused on the Palestinian territories, and in State Department offices overseeing policy in the region.

He served as the deputy chief of mission in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, from 2007 to 2009 during a brief easing of tensions with Khadafy government.

After the Arab Spring uprisings spread, first to Benghazi, then across Libya, he returned to the country under circumstances that would challenge any diplomat. Then, as he prepared to return this year as ambassador, he appeared in a video, subtitled in Arabic, recalling the United States’ own Civil War as an example of overcoming internal strife.

“We know that Libya is still recovering from an intense period of conflict,” he said. “And there are many courageous Libyans who bear the scars of that battle.”

He developed a reputation as a keen observer of Libya’s politics. He also kept up his routine of daily runs through goat farms, olive groves and vineyards nearby.

In his e-mail to family in friends, he joked about the Embassy’s Fourth of July party.

“Somehow our clever staff located a Libyan band that specializes in 1980s soft rock,” he wrote, “so I felt very much at home.”

Other fatal attacks

U.S. ambassadors killed in terrorism attacks in the past half-century:

• Adolph Dubs, Afghanistan, Feb. 14, 1979: Dubs was abducted by militants who demanded the release of an imprisoned leader of their party. After an exchange of gunfire between Afghan police officers and the kidnappers, an American medical team found Dubs dead.

• Francis E. Meloy Jr., Lebanon, June 16, 1976: Meloy, his economic adviser and their driver were abducted by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and shot to death.

• Rodger P. Davies, Cyprus, Aug. 19, 1974: Davies was shot during a protest against the embassy after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

• Cleo A. Noel Jr., Sudan, March 1, 1973: Noel was killed in an attack by guerrillas from the militant group Black September in the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Sudan.

• John Gordon Mein, Guatemala, Aug. 28, 1968: Mein was ordered out of his limousine and gunned down by guerrillas in Guatemala City.

The Washington Post

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